Maths Challenge at University of Kent

On Friday 7th July seven Year 8 students (Connor, Samantha, Mercedes, Ella, George, Daniel and Ty) and Mrs Hutt visited The University of Kent to take part in a fun filled day of Mathematics. They all took part in three workshops learning about Freud Detection, Game Theory, how to win at 'Rock, Paper, Scissors' and topographical genomes using Play Dough. The students presented their work on their Golden Ratio project to find out if people are influenced by this mathematical relationship.

The project was introduced to the class on Monday 3rd July by one of the University of Kent Ambassadors. The poster (attached) which displayed the findings had been completed by four fellow students from Year 8 (Maya, Leon, Ankit and Lilie).

The students would like to thank all those who took part in the data collection for this project (Folkestone Academy contributed 99 sets of data in the overall 400+ data set, this was the largest for any school taking part) and the final overall results were surprising; of those who completed the quiz on a phone the choices were very close to the Golden Ratio, so perhaps Da Vinci’s theory is correct. However those who completed the quiz on a tablet or laptop the results were nearer to 3 than the Golden 1.618 so we still are not sure whether the Golden Ratio is “perfect” and “more attractive”.

The students won the prize for the best presentation and analysis of data and the seven students have decided to share their chocolate winnings with the whole class as they feel everyone contributed to their success and even though they were the lucky few to attend the day everyone deserves to win.

Folkestone Academy is part of the Turner Schools family, in partnership with The King's School Canterbury. Turner Schools is an exempt charity regulated by the Department for Education, a company registered in England and Wales and limited by guarantee as Company Number 10084743. The registered address: Martello Primary, Warren Way, Folkestone, Kent, CT19 6DT